Skip to main content

La Dolce Vita

I'm in those dreamy moments before wakefulness. It feels like floating on clouds and it feels nice. I don't want to open my eyes. I want to sleep some more. But the clear, sweet voice insists, "Priya, Wake up! You wanna play cards?"

There's something about that voice that makes me open my sleep-burdened eyelids. There she is, sitting on the floor, right in front of my face. She looks like a live doll. She is bright and full of energy to take on the world. She's my guru about to impart a big life-affirming lesson to me, but I don't know that yet. She's all of three years old.

The next two days are filled with awesome adventures. We spend 10 minutes watching a pair of bumblebees having their breakfast in the flowerbed. We run after a very jumpy squirrel, trying to make friends unsuccessfully. We do make friends with the much-tattooed delivery guy and admire his two-wheel trolley. We start coloring with crayons, but end up with a far more fun game of using the crayon sticks as nine pins + dominos, making them stand up and toppling them. We crow with mirth when all those silly crayons fall on top of each other. We discover the thrilling game of unpuddling the puddles, splashing water on everybody and getting wet ourselves.

Every waking moment is a blockbuster, waiting to be seized and enjoyed. The here and now of discovery makes the past falls and future hurts immaterial.

The wide-eyed wonder she taught me made the weekend trip to Chicago magical.

It was probably the best weekend I could've picked up for a visit. It was cloudy, misty, and cool. The showers that punctuated our days made the city lights glow and glitter like jewels. It colored the waters of the Lake Michigan jade green, forming the perfect foreground for the breathtaking Chicago skyline. It spiked the wind with a chill that gave the romantic experience of hanging over the Chicago River at dusk an extra punch. It made the brightly painted and richly upholstered House of Blues feel more like a cozy haven.

Despite the wet weather, I was engulfed in the warmth of hospitality and kindness of friends. The weekend was a great deal about being together, about talking so much so fast and still running short of time to discuss everything, about remebering the good ol’ days and talking of the future, and about silly jokes and wonderful moments.

I couldn’t have asked for a better first visit to any city.

Comments

J said…
happiness is found in the smallest of things. it is in abundance in places where you seldom look for. :)

very well written. the initial paras can make one experience what you enjoyed.
August 28, 2007 at 11:33 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Priya’s Must Watch Movies List

(Warning: a long post) “Why don’t you write a blog post on Tamil movies that non-Tamil people can enjoy?” Arif asked me the other day, perhaps in a bid to stop me from going on and on about a recent Tamil movie I watched. It was a capital idea. I decided to take out couple of hours from a week that is killing in its work load to write the post. I knew I was going to have fun. Thank you Anup and Anil for helping me come up with the list! The Tamil Milieu “Frank passions of Tamil cinema”, said Nisha Susan in a recent article. How true! Hot headed, vocal, simple, loyal Tamils with centuries of unbroken performing arts tradition embraced cinema as early as 1897. It was the beginning of a long, passionate, earthy love story, making cinema an extension of our identity, a part of our popular culture, intermingling with politics and daily life. 50-feet cut outs are but a small expression of our love. We make countless stars and worship them with pure hearts. Our whole hearted approval of the f
5 comments
Read more

Catharsis

How relevant can a play that was first staged in 458 BC and won a goat as a prize in the Festival of Dionysius be to our lives now? I was cynical. Damn it, the hole burnt by the 75 USD I wasted on that completely puerile, award-winning musical on Broadway with a far shorter history still smoked in my purse. But it was a beautiful day outside – sunny and warm after 10 days of gloomy, cold, and wet weather. The play was happening practically next door and was priced at an affordable 14 USD. I’d never watched a Greek tragedy in my life and I had promised Geetha that I would come back and bore him with it. So off I went to watch what I thought was an ambitious presentation of the entire trilogy of Oresteia by Aeschylus by the Bradley University Theater group. Of course I had my reservations: I wondered how were they going to make me care about a story so bloody and unrelatable – hell, the plot outline sounded like a handbook on “How to kill your family and come up with convincin
3 comments
Read more

Sundarbans – The Mystic Vastness

You need to be in a state of preparedness to visit the Sundarbans. I suggest that you wait until you are over 30 and have experienced a few knocks, some heartbreak, and a little disappointment in life. It would help if you had ever searched for anything—God, happiness, truth, yourself. It might also be useful to believe that it is necessary to get lost to find your way. If you are the sort of person who finds music in the sound of the quiet lap of water against the tarred hull of the boat or the metaphor of life in drifting along endless waters on a little vessel, then you are ready for the magnificent mangroves. Because the Sundarbans is not for the weekend holidayers, the types who would want to drink beer, scratch their bum/crotch/head/something, throw plastic and Styrofoam into the water with impunity, and hope to get laid. I only hope that the crocodiles that eat them would not develop indigestion. It is important to find the right tour guide for the Sundarbans, as we did. Bi
6 comments
Read more

The Messy, Boozy, Bro-y, Funny World of Tamil Movie Heartbreak

Season of Love It seems like every young person in the 16 – 22 age group in Tamil Nadu is in love—with someone unacceptable to their parents. They are expressing their feelings vocally and dramatically, through TV music channels, FM channels, friends, WhatsApp and other social media. They are shaking up the very fundamentals of societal structures and hoary traditions. They are eloping or standing up to opposition; they are marrying in police stations, registrar offices and temples. Some end tragically, but a lot of them seem to be thriving, as parents are resigning to the new order. Sociologists might talk in terms of social mobility, aspirations, westernization, urbanization et al. Be that as it may, every time I call home, I hear one more story. Of clandestine actions, dramatic proclamations, and cinematic gestures. And Tamil movies—that bastion of “ energetic physicality and frank passions ”—supply the voice, plot, lyrics and music for these micro-epics unfolding in
Post a Comment
Read more

"Low Life Fictions" of Sadat Hasan Manto

My auto came to a halt atone of the dusty, grimy, grey traffic signals that dots the Mumbai suburban landscape. It was just another Mumbai road moment, the air vibrating with the restless thrum of the million engines carrying a million impatient people to their various destinations.  A dusty, grimy, grey street child was making the rounds of the waiting vehicles, begging. He was so small that any smaller, he would have been mistaken for the million bandicoots that live under the pavements and sewers. He was begging the way street children are perhaps taught in their Fagin’s academy—touching the passengers, knocking on the raised car windows, his tone whining and pitiful. He approached an auto containing two teenage girls. As he tried to touch them, one of the girls shrieked in a tone colored by disgust and fear, “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!” The little child, as like some of us around, was taken aback by the violence of her words. Just then the signal turned green
Post a Comment
Read more

Labels

Show more